From meat pies to sushi – has your business evolved?

I found myself in between appointments the other day, and I was hungry. Really gut-gurgling hungry. I didn’t want to go searching far and wide for food, so I opted for the foodcourt that was in front of me – not something I do very often. I’m not pretentious about food, but I do like to feed my soul as well as my stomach when I eat, so I tend to go for deliciously fresh options that are prepared specifically for me. However, on this occasion there wasn’t a lot of time so my choice was limited.

As I ordered my ricepaper rolls, I had cause to giggle. Two young burly tradies, with their tanned, hairless legs and Northface puffers on, sidled up next to me and ordered Fiji water and sushi.

What the??

Since when did tradies trade the Four’N Twenty pie and the chocolate Big M for imported water and seaweed??

Jeez. Times have changed.

As I inhaled my Vietnamese mint I had cause to reflect. I was reminded of toddling into town in my corporate days, past a building site at 8am, where the blokes were already sat down to smoke-o and their second meal of the day. Their ‘meal’ usually consisted of a maggot bag (a pie), a snot-box (a vanilla slice) and their nutrition (flavoured milk). THAT was what tradies ate. That’s what they’d eaten in the 70s when I was a kid. That’s what my friend’s older brother ate in the 80s as an apprectice. Because it filled them. Because their mates did. And because they’d burn more calories in a heartbeat than I did in a week at my desk.

So what the hell happened in the last decade? I’m imagining the marketers and Head of Sales at Four’N Twenty and Big M are wondering too. Big time.

You see these boys have moved on. They’re not what they used to be. They’re breaking the stereotype. They’re doing the same work, but their tastes have changed, the health messages have sunk in somewhere along the line, and their buying habits have changed as a result.